~ On stories, old and new

Tag Archives: children’s books

The beginning of Artemis Fowl lays out an incredibly rich, intelligent, independent supervillainous child with adult servants, and it is clear exactly how the book will end by the amount of main character worship in the first few pages. I found this book difficult to get into. I honestly thought about not reading the rest of it because I wasn’t sure I could make it through hearing any more about how everything always went the way this character wanted them to go. I wasn’t sure how anyone could make it through that crap.

Then I remembered that as a child, I used to watch Richie Rich cartoons. I honestly can’t tell you anything about any particular episode, but it all focuses around a very rich kid with adult servants, and everything always ends up all right for Richie Rich at the end of the episode. Considering how little I remember about it, I’m thinking it was probably a very predictable show, and maybe as a kid it was really fun to imagine having the kind of wealth and independence to do the kinds of things that Richie Rich did. So I decided to keep reading, knowing that it probably would have had more appeal to me as a kid than as an adult.

Much to my surprise, I started getting into the book. The main character worship toned down as things started going not quite as the main character planned, there was clever wordplay, secret codes to unravel, and running gags involving many of the secondary characters, all of which came together in a nice climax. Overall, I was glad to read the book. Even though the ending wasn’t a surprise, the journey took some turns I didn’t expect and was an entertaining read.

I’ve been involved with a book drive to fill the shelves a local charter school that currently has empty shelves (gasp!). Empty shelves in a library has to be one of the most horrifying things I’ve seen this year. We’ve been doing well with the donations, over 400 books and counting. The downside of this is that I have had boxes of books flowing through my hands with so many things I want to read and won’t have time to do before we turn the books over to the school and celebrate the re-opening of their new library.

Anyways, one of the books that I couldn’t put back in the box until I’ve read it: Joseph Bruchac’s . I love this book enough that I will have to purchase a copy I can keep. It has a wonderful blend of Native American folklore with modern mysterious happenings, and school-age struggles particularly with respect to being a minority at a boarding school. Bruchac expertly weaves mystical happenings with practical details, such as preparing for a winter camping trip, to the extent that fact and fiction are welded seamlessly together. After reading this book, and finding out that he had another children’s book in a similar myth-meets-modern vein, I decided that I should read everything he has ever written. (Then I looked him up and found out he’s written over fifty books for children and adults… I think I will skip the “Learning to read” level books, but that doesn’t whittle many titles off the list.)

I realize this is not the kind of detailed review I normally write, but the book has such an air of mystery, that I hesitate to spoil any of it for you. For now, back to feverishly trying to read way too many books in the two weeks before we open the library.